


Downfall

by quicksparrows



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, jack/angela and angela/gabriel implied too i guess, who the fuck formatted these character names for AO3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-09
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-20 11:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8247128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: The broad strokes of a time that is both failed career and a failed love.





	

**Author's Note:**

> syd: [posts s76/reaper gif]  
> me: stop i can't deal w/ this  
> syd: jenn, i love it so much-  
> me: it's too much syd. i can't go on.  
> syd: you gotta be strong jenn . be strong for lovely complicated old men  
> me: [furiously types out world-ending sadness]

.

 

 

                It's the cusp of sunset. The low sun lights up the fields gold and green, and the trees breaking them up cast long blue shadows. All that, the occasional farmhouse, the occasional satellite tower –– it all whips by Gabriel's train window. The rookie on his left is leaning around him a little to look out, but is trying not to be obvious about it. _Whatever,_ Gabriel thinks. If he wanted the window seat, he should have asked for it.

                "I miss the countryside sometimes," he says.

                His name is Jack. When they'd first met, he had promised they'd be friends. Gabriel doesn't quite see it yet, but he has a soft spot for rookies –– even the cornfed kind.

                "Did you think you _wouldn't_ miss home?"

                "Yeah. When I was a teenager, I couldn't wait to get out. Couldn't wait to see cities and night life and..." He waves a hand vaguely. "All of that. I couldn't wait."

                "Hmm," Gabriel hums. He wants to sleep, but Jack persists; from their minimal interaction thus far, he'd seemed to be the type that feeds off of conversation, always looking for an emotional hit. Gabriel isn't sure if it's worth having been right.

                "Have you ever lived out here?"

                "Nope," Gabriel says. "I've never lived anywhere smaller than Los Angeles."

                Gabriel watches a river sail by them. There's no texture difference in the way the train goes over the bridge, from tracks-on-gravel to tracks-on-concrete and back. It's a smooth ride, not much unlike flying.

                "Well, I've never lived anywhere bigger than fifty thousand people total, and that was spread a long way," Jack says. "My home military base was barely that big."

                Gabriel snorts.

                "Must be some small bases," Gabriel says. "Bragg's the biggest, and it has half a mil... a hundred thousand active-duty, with everything that's been going on. Indiana, right? What's your base?"

                "Atterbury," he says. "Mostly farmland."

                Dull as the dirt it's founded on. Gabriel just nods, curt as can be, and Jack smiles a touch –– he's not sure why. His mouth is sly when it curves like that.

                "Well, forget about farms. This program's going to make you into a man, and then show you the world," Gabriel says.

                Jack nods, turning his eyes to the back of the seam ahead of them. He drums his hands on his knees. Gabriel gives the fields one last look as the sun sets; the hills are golden, and the shadows are getting longer. The telephone lines are becoming great metal giants strung together a dozen times over.

                "I'm excited," Jack says, seemingly to himself. "This is going to be great."

                Everything seems promising.

 

* * *

 

                It takes ten thousand hours to master a skill. Half that, if you're a prodigy. 

                A mere quarter, if they put you in a specialized program designed to enhance man to his fullest potential.

                There's a dozen men and women in the program, but none excel like Gabriel and Jack. The two of them are unstoppable, particularly together. They get the best accolades, the most accelerations. They're first up in the morning, and the first to bed. They lap the others on the track field in long smooth strides, outlift them in the weight room, and show them up on genetic panels. They put on twice as many inches worth of muscle mass, and they take to being the first generation of super soldiers like they were born for it. 

                That's what best friends do.

                In the training ring one afternoon, Gabriel puts Jack in a lock and flips him with ease. Jack hits the training mats and sings out a hiss, but he gets up with a chuckle, unharmed and unshaken. He comes at Gabriel again and grapples with him, and the two of them spar like titans. Jack catches Gabriel in the gut and puts him down, and he takes himself down in the process. They hit the mats together, broad chests together, muscled thighs and sculpted arms tangled in the tussle until Jack _pins_ him, hands firm.

                Their commander blows his whistles. A panel of experts jot down notes.

                Jack laughs, jokingly pretends to squat over Gabriel's face as he gets up. Gabriel scoffs and excuses himself. He's always been a bit of a sore loser, and Jack's cut jaw and all-American good looks are a bit of a rub. Still, Gabriel leaves the ring with adrenaline pounding and a stiffness in his pants that doesn't let up.

                When they reconvene in the showers, Gabriel kisses Jack for the first time, and Jack _knows_ who his superior is.

 

 

* * *

 

 

                Their flight from LAX to ZRH ends up redirected. Omnics in the air, apparently, but whether it's a threat to them specifically or not, they end up at Heathrow to wait it out before catching a connecting flight to Zurich. Jack gets impatient with delays –– he always wants his boots on the ground –– but Gabriel welcomes the buffer.

                He's been told there's a good chance he'll be named leader when this so-called Overwatch Initiative goes live –– _if_ it goes live. If it happens, it will be the highest achievement of his life thus far, and he will want something good to say. Something cool. Something memorable.

                Time in layover buys him time to sort that out. He spends that time sitting in a hard plastic chair, his carry-on at his feet and a lukewarm coffee in his hand. Jack is on his right and bitching incessantly about planes, but it's a white noise largely lost amongst the chatter and hum of the airport gates.

                Gabriel feels like he's in reach of his destiny.

                He just has to grasp it.

 

* * *

 

 _Overwatch_ is happening. They're getting a team.

                "Dr. Ziegler," Gabriel says, extending a hand. 

                "Oh no, that won't do," she laughs, taking his hand. " _Dr. Ziegler,_ like this is a meeting, or a hearing! You must call me Angela, especially if we're to be comrades."

                She is blonde and lithe and beautiful. She doesn't look like a soldier at all; he thinks she's perfectly at home with a clipboard and heels, the latter of which echo through the cavernous front hall with every step on the marble floors.

                "Angela," Gabriel repeats. Some dumb pick-up line about angels floats across his mind, but he can't figure out how to make it sound smooth. Casual address aside, they are still on foreign soil for the purpose of asymmetrical warfare. They're representatives, and soldiers, and, if the UN is to be believed, tasked with saving the world. There's still protocol and—

                "Angela," Jack says, a touch louder than necessary. "I must have died and gone to heaven."

                He extends a hand to shake hers.

                "My! You certainly are American," she says. She glances aside at Gabriel. "Does he make angel jokes to you, too, Gabriel?"

                Gabriel's stomach turns with embarrassment, and he snaps his gaze to Jack to shoot him a warning look. But Dr. Ziegler — Angela — just laughs and takes Jack's hand. Instead of shaking it, she turns it over in hers and presses two fingers to his pulse. Jack rolls with it beautifully, tugging back his shirt cuff for her.

                "See for yourself," he says.

                "You seem fine to me," Angela says, smile wide. "Perhaps next time, Jack Morrison! I'm pleased to meet you."

                "The pleasure is all mine," Jack says. He catches her hand now, and she doesn't pull away. He says: "I hear you're pioneering a lot of new research that goes beyond what the S.E.P. does –– maybe you'd like to see what they've done to us!"

                Gabriel bristles. "Jack," he says, curtly.

                Jack toes the line, letting go of Angela's hand and rearranging his shirt cuff.

                "My apologies," Gabriel says to Angela. "Jack here is a complete disaster; grew up in a barn, and all. He's never been to a UN gathering before."

                "Neither have you," Jack snorts.

                Angela laughs.

                "Well, I've been involved with the UN for some years now, so it is far from new to me," she says, even though she can't be far beyond her early twenties. Her smile is possibly the most beatific thing that Gabriel has ever seen. "It's not all pomp and circumstance. There's always room for banter. In fact, it's better we become friends –– we don't want to fight alongside relative strangers, do we?"

                She turns her eyes to Gabriel and brushes her bangs from her eyes.

                "Of course not," he says. 

                Her eyes turn back to Jack before long.

 

* * *

 

                Overwatch takes them around the world at dizzying speeds. Gabriel didn't see himself here when he was a boy, but as a man, he's thrilled –– it's a heady experience, one you couldn't get in a thousand lifetimes. When Overwatch succeeds at shutting down the Omnic Crisis, Gabriel Reyes' will have his name on the top of every press bulletin, as the man who led the world to a new era of peace.

                There isn't anything he doesn't love. Pulse munition fumes, jet fuel, the sting of bullets piercing air, and all. 

                There are no nights off during this war, but on the rare quiet night Jack and Gabriel watch boring old movies on a security screen and polish off a case of beers. Sometimes Reinhardt will join them, depending on what's going on in the world, and they're certainly all rowdier on those nights, but Gabriel could admit to a certain preference to evenings where it's just the two of them. It is nice to not be the leader of Overwatch, for just the evening, and be friends. Two men on the cusp of the greatest initiative of their lives –– two men with their whole futures against them.

                Jack is on his sixth beer now, and the bottles are lining up. Gabriel is going faster, but neither have much in the way of concerns. They are, after all, super soldiers. Genetically enhanced. Their livers pulverize alcohol well before it can take effect.

                When Rein turns in for the night, closing the control room door behind him, Jack sidles into Gabe's lap and runs his callused fingers under the hem of his shirt.

                "You know, Gabe," Jack says, working his way up Gabriel's throat, utterly relaxed. "We're going to win this war."

                Gabriel unbuttons Jack's fly. Why he insists on yapping when there are so many better uses for that mouth, Gabe will never know, but Jack sees everything through eventually.

                "Of course we are," Gabriel says. But the war has been long. They've lost good people, and while they're making excellent grounds over the Omnics, there's still time for everything to go wrong. "We just can't get cocky about it."

                "Who said anything about being cocky?" Jack says. "We're just going to get it done. That's what we do."

                Gabriel snorts. He doesn't have Jack's constant self-assured confidence; Gabe needs to confirm his kills. He also envies Jack's attitude that victory is his god-given right, at times. 

                But differences aside, these kinds of things make them complete each other.

 

* * *

 

 

                For a moment, in their roughest battle yet, Gabriel thinks he's going to die.

                His bulletproof vest has absorbed much of the spray, but body armor does little for the full weight of a fallen Bastion. He is trained to bear pain and use his carefully honed muscle to survive impacts that would kill a normal man in an instant, and so Gabriel persists. He has his elbows locked and he can keep the weight from crushing his midsection entirely –– but he will die when his arms give out. He can't push it off. He's tried, and it's too much.

                He hollers for help, but by time it comes out of his mouth, help is already here.

                In that moment Reinhardt pulls the Bastion off of him, and the woman they're now calling Mercy descends upon him. She raises her staff and engulfs him in a golden aura. Immediately, he feels his impact-damaged flesh begin to move, stitching together and _pulsing_. A few bullets pop up out of their holes, a slow-motion reverse that is beyond any words Gabriel can think of. Under that golden light, his body becomes whole again.

                "What on earth was that?" he says, as she hauls him to his feet.

                He's seen her stitch wounds, set bones, and shuttle people from danger, but he's never seen something quite like this, let alone been party to it. He's almost shaking, like every cell in his body is itching to go.

                Mercy smiles, gesturing with her staff.

                "I made some modifications," she says.

                He feels warmed all over. He puts a hand to her shoulder in silent thanks, palm lingering a moment, but even as he looks at her, she's already looking for trouble in the distance again.

                "Hey Reyes," Jack barks from the top of some rubble. "Brush it off and get a move on."

                Gabriel turns and frowns. He'd say there's no place for teasing on the battlefield, but it doesn't sound like teasing anyway.

                It sounds like an order.

                It's not the first time he's heard Jack make orders, but it's the first time it's been directed at him. _Him,_ the leader of Overwatch.

                It doesn't sit well.

 

* * *

 

                Gabriel runs his fingers down Jack's spine, but Jack doesn't react, doesn't shiver, doesn't even turn his head. Gabriel does it again, slower, more insistent, and Jack just sighs and shifts away.

                "Mercy had to patch me up today," he says, "So watch it."

                Gabriel frowns.

                "What happened?"

                "While you took the left flank, some bucket of bolts got a lucky hit on me," Jack says. He shrugs. "So I'm just not feeling up to it."

                Gabriel doesn't see a mark, any sign on Jack's skin that he was ever wounded. He decides to give Jack the benefit of the doubt, even if the tension between them thickens.

                "That's alright," Gabriel says, with only a twinge of irritation. It's been _weeks_. They're both exhausted, sure, and co-ordination is hell during missions, but that never stopped them years ago.

                But Gabriel has patience, even though it is beginning to wear thin. There will be time to rest and repair when the war is over.

 

* * *

 

                "Our first meal in a peaceful world," Angela says, in toast.

                Gabriel thinks she is naive. There is no such thing as a peaceful world. But Jack chuckles, raises his glass in turn, and clinks it against hers. Gabriel follows with the slightest twinge of reluctance. He feels like he is being choked by his own collar.

                The war is over. Why isn't he delighted, too?

                "I don't think you've ever been so happy," Jack says to Angela. He ribs her: "Now you can go back to your lab, hmm? Get away from us _Americans_?"

                Angela laughs, smiles, lets her eyes drop to her dinner plate.

                "To my lab, yes," she says. She lifts her eyes again, between both of them. "I will miss spending so much time with you."

                "Well, we're not going back Stateside just yet," Gabriel says, but her eyes linger on Jack. "We still have business here, and Overwatch will be revamped for new purposes."

                "It'll be different," Jack says. "But we'll still see each other. There will always be a need for Overwatch."

                Angela laughs.

                A pair of men approach the table, suddenly. One is holding a video camera. The other man says: "Excuse me, Mr. Morrison? I don't mean to interrupt."

                Jack looks up at them, broad smile and easy confidence and the slightest, genuine crinkle around his sky-blue, all-American eyes. "Not at all. What can I do for you gentlemen?"

                Gabriel wants to wipe that smile off his face, but Jack has been swimming in this barbecues-and-kissing-babies charm ever since the papers declaring the war over were signed. It's Gabriel's signature on those papers, but the _people_ have chosen Jack.

                Those people fawn over him now: _What are your next plans for Overwatch? What is it like, knowing you've saved the world? Your parents must be so proud. Your whole nation is proud of you._

                Angela puts a hand on his over the table, fingers slender and nimble. While Jack talks, Angela looks at Gabriel and she mouths: _What an ego!_  

                Her sympathy is a small, warm flicker in his brain. The rest of him is seeing red, because he doesn't know what to do. He sees what's happening, and feels the urge to boldly take Jack down several pegs, but Jack was once his friend. A lover. A partner, even. 

                Gabriel realizes then that his fall will be inevitable, and he doesn't know where he should have reached to stop it.

 

* * *

 

                Highest highs, and then they give way to ever-lower lows, and there's no coming back from that.

                Gabriel never much liked pomp and circumstance, but he puts on a suit when the time comes for Morrison's promotion ceremony. Amongst the sea of glittering gowns, cutesy short dresses, and tuxedos with satin accents, there's Gabriel in black and black and black, plain and understated and dressed for a funeral. It might as well be.

                Jack is dead to him.

                Morrison hasn't been _Jack_ in his mind for a few weeks now. He couldn't be _Jack_ after _Morrison_ got the promotion that Gabriel worked his entire life for, that he had sacrificed so much for. It boils his blood and makes his teeth ache and his sense of injustice swell so much he could just burst.

                He watches Morrison accept the position. There is applause and there are cheers, but Gabriel hears nothing. He is thinking about how someone could praise the virtues of service and the importance of humanity and then stand on the backs of otheres. 

                He watches Morrison accept pins on his lapel. Watches his lips move to some rousing speech. He hears nothing. He is thinking about what kind of man discards people for their own gain.

                He watches Morrison's eyes find him in the crowd, linger as if to say something, thank him for something, anything, for hauling his rookie ass to training and putting up with him, for being there, but Gabriel hears nothing, because Morrison says nothing.

                Gabriel is thinking about how he _loved_ this man.

                After the ceremony is done with, Gabriel retreats from the press and the officials and all of his comrades acting like glitterati and celebrities when they should be soldiers. He skulks into the locker rooms and, in a fit of rage, kicks Morrison's old locker until the door is dented and the hinges struggle to open up.

                And then he kicks it a little more, until he can just yank the door clear off.

                It hasn't been used in years, but there's a bit of note paper still stuck to one of the shelves with a bit of peeling tape. It's closed, but Gabriel knows what it says. It's a note he wrote to Jack, one that he'd left on his bunk, once. And Jack had kept it, because they used to be close like that.

                They've been slowly estranged for years, now, but the memories bubble up like sewer water. 

                He thinks of Morrison's face and revels in the unbridled, undignified fury of it. 

                Better that than remembering how they used to make love.

 

* * *

 

                She looks up from her schematics with a silent question: _really?_

                It's doubting, and Gabriel is sick of being doubted.

                "There are many people who can pilot Valkyrie suits," she says. "I know you need _someone_ , but _I'm_ hardly necessary."

                Gabriel knows that. It's not an answer, but she's the master of the easy let-down, gently walking him towards the conclusion he could have guessed from the start. He doesn't care: if he's going to have someone coasting behind him in gold and white and angel wings, he wants it to be Angela.

                He wants her because otherwise Jack will have her, and he can't handle the indignity.

                "I want _you_ ," he says, firmly, as if he were still the leader of Overwatch and still had the power to command that.

                Angela laughs: "Well, you can't have me."

                Of course not. Gabriel doesn't get jack shit in this life. He's practically fucking impotent these days.

                "Anyone can patch up refugees in a camp or schmooze at charity galas," Gabriel says, firmer. "Anyone. But nobody pilots Valkyrie like you do."

                She's flattered; she must be, the way she draws herself up a little taller, the way she looks aside with a smile.

                "I understand you want the best people for Blackwatch, Gabriel," she says. "But I simply cannot. I am head of medical research. Even if I wanted to go back in the field, I have work here, and there are protocols..."

                He grits his teeth a little.

                "The Almighty Strike Commander wouldn't allow it, huh?" Gabriel growls. "Lets me put together a team, a fucking consolation prize, but then leaves me no one to choose from."

                Angela sighs. She has learned, he has noticed, to not defend Jack to him. 

                "Your words," she says. "Not mine."

 

* * *

 

                A rare word from God's gift to humanity, the magnaminous and consummate prince of the fucking universe, Jack fucking Morrison. These few words after years of indirect communication and missed connections are:

                "Blackwatch is getting out of hand."

Since fucking when does Morrison care about things getting out of hand? Morrison, the patron saint of letting things collapse without giving a damn, or saying a word, or doing anything to slow the fall. This fucking jack––

                "Blackwatch is my business," Gabriel replies, short and curt and through his teeth. Don't fuck with me.

                Morrison pauses. The years have been good to him, which makes Gabriel resent him more, but the look on his face looks more punchable than ever.

                "I trust you'll get things in order," Morrison says, finally. His voice is a little lower than it used to be, huskier.

                "Was there a problem with my leadership when I was leading Overwatch?" Gabriel asks. It pops out low and aggressive, completely thoughtless.

                "The UN is investigating us after increased calls for transparency," Morrison says, hard and firm and _orderly._ "I need weekly reports, Reyes. Noses clean."

                If Overwatch is in disrepute, then whose fault is that? Not Gabriel's, that's for sure. He isn't the leader of Overwatch.

                He stopped caring about Overwatch's future when it stopped being his.

                But the sewer water feeling is back again. The smell lingers in his nostrils like it was yesterday, his skin clammy under a cold sweat, and the waters rise. It takes months to purge, to bring himself back to the low, simmering hate that is his default. It ruins his house. It _always_ ruins his house.

 

* * *

 

                "These sanctions will ruin everything we worked for –– won't you please speak to each other? Let bygones be bygones?"

                Her cajoling irritates him. Does Angela think it's that _easy_? Trick them both into being in the same room, ask them to speak, and suddenly the amends pour out? _Never._ Gabriel has nothing to say to Morrison, let alone any apologies. He doesn't fucking care if Overwatch goes down –– if Overwatch is ruined, so is Morrison's reputation.

                Still, he meets Morrison's eyes from across the room. The man he'd once called a best friend and lover and comrade and brother-in-arms just stares back, eyes dull with anger, jaw set in a way that Gabriel thinks is profoundly ugly. Morrison doesn't say anything. Both men look away.

                "This is absurd," Angela says, getting frustrated. Fine; let her be frustrated. Maybe she'll understand a fraction of what he feels. "You two were once closer than brothers, and now you can barely look at each other! How did either of you allow it to get this far?"

                "Angela," Morrison says, clipped. "You're not going to get through to him."

                Get through to _him_?

                Gabriel walks the length of the room to Morrison and throws the punch he's wanted to land for months. It connects, Morrison's cheekbone crunching under his knuckles, and Morrison reels back but doesn't _come_ back. He just picks himself up off the edge of the countertop and looks at Gabriel with ice cold eyes. Angela gasps, but Angela should have known that putting them in a room together would result in this.

                Morrison says: "Nothing is ever his fault."

                Gabriel swings again.

                Morrison takes that one too, and he comes back with a bleeding nose and an eye that will surely blacken. 

                "Won't even _consider_ the possibility that the great Gabriel Reyes could possibly fall short––"

                And again.

                Morrison straightens up again, drooling blood but utterly unperturbed. Gabriel wants to beat the smirk off his face, beat him until his cheeks purple and his handsome jaw hangs slack, but Angela forces herself in the space between them and seizes his arm.

                "That's enough!" she cries. She raises her chin at him and her eyes flash. "What on earth is wrong with you, Gabriel?!"

                She sounds concerned for him even when she is angry, but Gabriel just _knows_ her immediate concern is Jack's pretty face.

                Gabriel just leaves. 

                He decides that the next time he's at the Swiss HQ, it'll be the last visit he ever makes.

 

* * *

 

                Everything smells of rotten eggs. Putrid, vile, _dangerous_.

                They called this place home, once, but now it is a modern-day powder keg. Alarms are blaring. _Evacuate._

                Gabriel tries to get to his feet but he can't; Morrison's never been stingy with the pulse munitions. Gabriel feels like swiss cheese with the number of craters left in his flesh, but he's not dead yet. Morrison is, though. Morrison took that last spray of bullets hard, and his body has given out –– he is wheezing on the floor. Punctured a lung or something, Gabriel thinks, even as his own body oozes fluids across the tile. Gabriel feels a surge of pride anyway: _how the mighty have fallen._

                He is, however, dying. This time, it's for real, and this time, he wants to go. There's no reason to stay, after he finishes what he's doing here.

                "Mother–" Morrison gasps.

                He means motherfucker because Gabriel has never heard Jack call his mother anything but Ma, but he likes the thought of it: Jack Morrison, Strike Commander, reduced to this. _Dying_.

                With the last strength in his body, Gabriel drags himself towards Jack's prone body. Gabriel doesn't care if the blast — any second now — eviscerates them, leaves them irradiated ash, not even a pink mist.

                If he is to die, it will be with his fingers around Jack Morrison's throat.

                He jerks down the protective neck brace on Jack's armor and wraps his fingers around his windpipe. It takes more strength than he has, so he hauls himself over Jack and crushes him that way, by sheer weight alone.

                His hearing is just ringing, ringing, more ringing. 

                If he died right now, he'd be vindicated.

                And then they're _nothing._

 

* * *

 

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

                He is somewhere.

                He can't tell. There's no sensation, no sight nor smell nor taste. There's so little touch that he feels he might be floating, save for a pinprick here or there — something starched and clean, like linen. A needle. A moisture.

                But there is sound, clear and pure.

                "Can you hear me?" the voice asks. It's the voice of an angel. "I've wired directly into the part of your brain that processes sound. Incredible, isn't it?"

                His thoughts tangle.

                "Perhaps you are still unconscious, though — perhaps this is but a dream to you," she says. She sounds far away, but collected. She pauses; he senses the roll of her lips as she ponders. And then, so sweetly: "Did you have a change of heart, Gabriel? Did you find peace, finally?"

_What?_

                In his mind's eye, she glides her hands up his forearms and beams at him with pride. She's always wanted peace, always.

                "Jack will live," she says, and he wants to jolt up at that but he is trapped in his prone body — if it's a body at all. 

                Every neuron in him lights up red with rage.

                He wants to burst from this stasis and throttle her, too, but his limbs are floating, and he isn't sure he has fingers at all.

                He hears her breath hitch. Is this  _bitch_  honestly _crying?_

                "All because you shielded him from the blast — you are a hero, Gabriel!"

                This is a nightmare. It's a fucking nightmare.

                "And I will have you live, too," she says.

                He surges forward, a mess of cables and wires and bending supports. His paper skin tears, and his organs crunch together, and what sinew he has left snaps like cello strings, but he will tear himself apart to kill her.

                He doesn't succeed, because he never wins.

 

* * *

 

                It takes five years to come back from where the blast had left him –– reconstruction, physiotherapy, training, reconditioning. Extraordinary effort is put into his survival, but that's just what guilty consciences do, even if no one will ever admit to it. They ruined his life and would just feel guiltier if they let him die.

                A lot of people have ruined his life. Some directly, but many of them indirectly. They're scum, every one of them, but they'll all get their just desserts eventually. Gabriel fancies himself the one who will tell them when their time has come. 

                He'll be a grim reaper, of sorts.

                After everything, hate is the only thing powerful enough to feel anymore.

 

 


End file.
